How can I efficiently farm the jungle in public matches?

Question

Currently, I am at a horrendous 950 MMR in Dota 2, although I do not consider myself bad in any way at the game. My main struggle is that because I enjoy playing safe lane (bot for Radiant, top for Dire) carry heroes such as Anti-Mage and Spectre, I must be able to effectively farm the jungle.

In professional Dota 2 games, there are supports who stack the jungle and roam around so that the carry player can focus on flash farming. However, in pubs, this is not the case, as most "supports" just sit in lane and do nothing except harass (or, at my MMR, steal CS from the carry).

How do I compensate for this? Should I be stacking the jungle myself and leave lane at the :47-48 mark to stack? Should I just let my farm be slightly slower because of incompetent supports? Is farming the jungle not worth it until I build a Battle Fury (Anti-Mage) or a Radiance (Spectre)?

P.S. Most supports at my MMR either do not know how to stack or will not stack the jungle.

Answer 1

Dota2 is essentially a time-optimization game. If you can increase your strength faster than your opponent you will win.

What's important to realize is that pro-players are really good at optimizing. Furthermore they're a team, they play together a lot and they communicate a lot (headsets, not chat). This time efficiency is essential to flash farming.

A lot of things have to come together for flash farming to work:

• The support needs to prepare the stacks. This means s/he can't be in a fight somewhere else on the map.
• Timing, you can only stack on the whole minute mark. From a time efficiency pov this is probably the hardest.
• Some supports can stack two camps at once. I think it's also possible if you have a blink dagger.

MMR is an indication of how strong of a player you are. Dota2 has different elements that you can be strong at, such as: drafting, last hitting, fighting, warding and leadership. Maybe you are really good at last hitting and farming but you're not so good at fighting. If you play a game where your team is fighting a lot, or the opponents come to deny your farm (they roam/smoke your jungle) then you'll have a difficult game. Heroes like Anti-Mage and Spectre are notorious for requiring a lot of farm. This is because they have very powerful abilities. Anti-Mage is very mobile and can farm fast with blink and battlefury. Spectre can use his ultimate ability to join fights, which is really efficient for farming since he can farm right up to the point he is needed. Denying farm to these heroes is a valid strategy.

I'm around 3.8k and I watched a game of a friend of mine at 1.8k. What I noticed is that even at that low MMR (sub 25 percentile) the players are really good at the game. They understand drafting, items, roles and team strategy. But it's all about efficiency. If you can raise your GPM by 5% , if you can manage to die 1 less time or get 1 more kill in the early game, you'll win more games and your MMR rises.

What's also important to realize is that if your supports don't understand pulling and stacking, the opponents supports also don't understand it, so it's a level playing field. And maybe you do encounter a support that stacks camps, that probably means he's really bad at everything else :P

I can also tell you that even at 3.8k MMR pulling and stacking doesn't matter that much. Having vision and creating space is more important. I have a 5k friend and at that level stacking is expected. Also, jungle farming and pulling was nerfed over the last few patches so it's become less efficient.

Answer 2

The first thing to realize is that you can't do jungle rotations immediately.

First you really want the first 4 minutes of farm so you have basic items like quelling blade (core on every melee carry hero) perhaps stout shield or improved boots.

Then when you feel like you could clear a camp with easy (meaning quickly and not losing health) you start to push your line while still last hitting. For example kill enemy ranged creep first, insert few autoattacks between last hits.

This will push lane equilibrium towards enemy tower. And while they have to defend against your creeps, you'll slip into jungle and kill 1 or 2 closest camps and get back to lane - not to miss any creeps from normal wave.

Enemy tower will push the equilibrium back again, so you can rinse and repeat.

Answer 3

If you want to constantly win the games at your MMR, don't play heroes like AM or Spec. These carries are just weak at the beginning of the game, and you need to farm a long time to get the items you need. As you mentioned, supports at your MMR don't know what to do, so it's better just change your own style.